There was the intense three days up there in the Tuixoquel....we all had our senses and emotions put through a grinder....heart wrenching moments of kindness and joy....mixed in with scenes and conditions of poverty that can never be quite comprehended until you have stood amongst it and seen it for yourself....which was the whole point of going there....but still nothing can fully prepare you for it.  The villagers swarm to meet us as we get out of the van.  They greet us with openness and stubborn resolve to immediately share what little they have with us.  Those who have literally nothing....implore us....despite all our protestations....to share their meager food....this one kindness is alone almost too unbearable for us all.  "Its nothing compared to what you have done for us" they say....to try to make us feel slightly better.

Their everyday problems and needs are complex and multi layered.  Their priorty is quite rightly education....but its obviously only part of the problems....other issues then also follow....birth control, clean water, medicine, diet, agriculture, proper stoves....etc, etc.

After the inauguration show and presentations on the new playground....we wiped the tears from and eyes and began to get busy....Robert B and Walter were making plans and drawings for water drainage and working on building issues....Rob Daly's family photoshoot set-up was a sensation....as word spread, more and more families arrived and stood proudly in their best clothes for "El Grande" to photograph them.  Hoards of children and parents gathered around the printer he had carried from London to see him pull out prints and hold them up, like a magician....then with wide eyes they carried the prints off to their houses....stopping to show everyone as they went.

We all mixed in with discussion and help wherever we could.  Robert B and I joined in football with the local guys in a very physical game....( I'm sure my team won by the way RB)....we reverted to playing with a frisbee that Robert B had brought each time the ball disappeared off the surface and bounced 500ft down the valley after missing the far end goal.  Rob Daly and I would like to join Robert Brown in paying for a fence extension at that end to cure that please!

After all we have seen....it is even more obvious now how much the work CEF does and the donations that all of us have made, make an enormous difference directly to the quality of the lives of everyone in this one village alone.

The village (La Cumbre) we lastly visited with Rueben seemed to my entirely untrained (compassionate) eye....very suitable as another candidate for a school build....even after just a few minutes, there was something about the place that certainly caught my imagination and touched the soul.  Perhaps it was the smiling face of a little girl with a baby on her back there.... which seems still burned into my retina....or the solid logic and enthusiasm of the existing teacher there.  Maybe the sad little song the children sung to us, without guile, about pollution of their land and animals....I dont know.

Back here....its hard to adjust to all that we have....and feel worthy of the comfort we all live in.  There is a man who understands it all so well....he can touch us all so deeply with his compassion when he says:

Over coming poverty is not a gesture of charity, it is an act of justice.  It is the fundamental human right.  The right to dignity and a decent life.

— Nelson Mandela

It was a privilege to be invited to go to Guatemala with the CEF team....and I miss them all.  They are all wonderful.  I will be working on the little film and getting all the images together as soon as I can.

Take care los amigos    see the movie    [collapse this story]

I was really keen to see how the work of all our production team, models, photographers and Getty Images had benefited the communities in Guatemala.  They (CEF) squeezed another place for me in the minibus and I was off.

After flying to Guatemala city with Chris, we drove to the town of Antigua where we met up with the other members of the CEF team, a wonderful group of people.  From there it was on to our base camp of Comitancillo, a vary basic town, where we checked in to our very basic hotel, bed bugs and all, thrown in for free.

It was from here that our group ventured each day in our mini bus on a winding one hour drive up into the highlands to the village of Tuixoquel.  It is this community that has had the first CEF funded school.  The wonderful warm welcome we received from the villagers was a true reflection of the gratitude of these people for the years of commitment given to the community by CEF.  I was deeply touched.

The centerpiece of the village is the school. Amenities in the village are few, with a single electricity socket and a single water tap for the entire community of 40 families.  When you see such basic living conditions as these, it really motivates you to want to do as much as possible to help the community improve their situation.

My particular assignment for this trip, as we all had individual assignments, was to photograph every family in the village and to give them prints.  This was particularly significant as they had never had photographs taken of themselves before.  It was very gratifying to see their joy.  The importance to them of these new treasured possessions was enormous.  Living in the developed world, we take for granted simple things like photographs of ourselves, our friends and family, but in a community like Tuixoquel, family photographs are treasured as they are very difficult, if not impossible to come by as no-one has printers, and there are no local photo printing shops.

I took a small printer with me that printed beautiful quality 6x4 prints straight from the flashcard.  On the first day in Tuixoquel, the families were lining up to have their pictures taken, with everyone else in the village as spectators.  They all seemed to really enjoy the whole spectacle.  Even though communication was a bit of a challenge ( there are 20 regional dialects that exist in Guatemala ) and I knew only a couple of words of their dialect, sign language and silly faces seemed to do the trick and completed the task in hand.

It was wonderful photographing people who had never been photographed before and then printing the images out for them almost immediately on my little printer.  All of the children and many of the adults gathered around the small table where the printer was churning out prints and were delighted to see their family photos.  Over 2 afternoons I shot about 35 families and various individuals and the community leaders.  I enjoyed the experience as much as they did.

I also filmed Chris as he did his, to camera, pieces, highlighting the problems faced by the community, including the extremely tough housing conditions; no electricity, no running water, basic mud brick buildings with no stoves but open fires and no chimneys.  The conditions inside were basic in the extreme, cold, muddy and very smoky.  The film says it all, as does the shocking infant mortality rate which is unacceptedly high.

On our final day in the highlands we visited another village school that was hoping for funding.  They had what could only be described as a wood plank and tin roofed shack as their current school.  The school teacher was intelligent and informed and put forward their case for a new school building which was so obviously needed.  They had a plot of land that had already been leveled and was ready and waiting for their new school, and I sincerely hope that CEF will be able to provide it for them, should the project fulfill all the criteria.

There is no doubt many other communities in Guatemala would benefit from funding.  On seeing the work that CEF has achieved so far and will go on to do for many more communities, and also witnessing first hand how the efforts of everyone who contributes to CEF’s work benefits the lives of so many people, I feel inspired and proud to be one small part of such a worthy organisation.

see the movie    [collapse this story]